Can we not f-ing fall for this? Just once ...
If you're discussing Sydney Sweeney and a jeans commercial, it means you're not talking about Jeffrey Epstein. The GOP thanks you.
I’m gonna keep this one brief, because every extra second discussing the subject matter at hand is a second too many.
Deep breath.
Here I go …
By now, you have most certainly observed the uproar caused by actress Sydney Sweeney and her apparently controversial appearance in some commercial spots for American Eagle jeans. People (almost all on the left) say the ads are racist, sexist, vile. Wrote the Wall Street Journal …
And I’m not even arguing that people who loathe the ads are wrong. Truly, I’m not. I get it. Truly.
What I’m saying is—Can we on the left please, please, please not take this bait yet again?
Pretty please.
Conservative America wants nothing more than to mud wrestle us on their terms. This—Sweeney, a jeans commercial, pop culture outrage—is their terms. It presents us as unhinged and irrational and itching for yet another celebrity or idea to “cancel.” It makes us look absurdly puritanical and lame. I hate the right’s tactics, I’m disgusted by the right’s tactics, but, well, they’re impactful. They work. They do exactly what the right wants them to do. Namely, the turn us into punchlines.
So … let’s not for fall it.
Seriously, let’s not.
Yesterday at the White House, former New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor appeared with Donald Trump as part of the announcement of an executive order restarting the Presidential Fitness Test. Taylor—one of my boyhood heroes, but now all MAGA, all the way—is a registered sex offender. Seriously. I can’t make this shit up. In 2010 he was arrested on rape and prostitution charges in connection with the assault of a 16-year-old girl.
I repeat: As the Epstein shit-show rolls on, Trump decided to appear with a registered sex offender. Brought him into the people’s house. Wrapped his arm around him. Hugged him.
Let’s talk about that.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Without the distraction of a jeans ad.
Good article. There’s no such thing as information overload. There’s just filter failure. So it’s mind boggling to me that anybody gave two shits about a denim trousers advert. Your attention is valuable - rev up your filter and focus on things that matter. The first two being your own mental & physical health.
I noted the Sydney Sweeney dust-up and moved on. But may I point out — not in shaming, but in the same winking way I’d do it with the fabulous kind men I live around — that it’s maybe a bit harder for a white guy of a certain age to grasp how many women are weary to the bone of being objectified, how every one of us understands that it’s stuff like this that adds to the myriad reasons why not one single woman reading this can walk alone in a parking garage, a dark street or even a well-lit city street without the constant underbeat of scanning her surroundings for predatory men? And how many of us are speaking up for the young women around us who have not yet found their voices? And that’s not even addressing the racism, which is equally destructive. Since I am white, I leave that to my friends of color to share their experience. Yes, we have bigger fish to fry than the ad. But yes, calling it out is the right thing to do.